Leal, Walter ed.(2017). Implementing Sustainability in the Curriculum of Universities

Transforming Collaborative Practices for Curriculum & Teaching Innovations w/ the Sus. Forum

The authors highlight the learning opportunities they generated by their collective actions resulting in curriculum developments and enchantments.

... uni. need to ensure that curriculum are "fit for purpose," and enhance "graduates' capabilities to contribute to sus. and just societies" ... To the extent that uni have incorporated knowledge and cognitive elements regarding the environment, climate, economic and social change issues into courses, advances have been made. But this response merely delivers ed about sus (Sterling 2014). By contrast, they have struggled to deliver on ed for sus. (Cotto and Winter 2010; Tilbury 2011). ... These are widely recognised to be important to deliver deeper and transformative types of ed and are thus important aspects to support students' longer term dev and employability... This chapter highlights the possibilities and scope for deeper transformative ed opportunities that have been created not by formalised institutional processes, but rather by an informal community of academics coming together to participating our Sus. Forum.

2. Uni. of Bedfordshire's Baseline Scenario in 2013 

3 Academics from a Community of Practice

In so doing they had effectively externalised the theories and practice of multi-disciplinarity, "horizontal learning" (Freire 2005), co-learning and collaboration... critical facilities and modes of awareness that can equip students to respond and adapt to our chain world scenarios and propose ways...

4 Generating CUrriculum Consequences & Demonstrating its Success in Informal Leadership Learning Opportunities

In Table 1 (Changing curriculum scenarios resulting from world of Sus Forum) include details of the key activities and processes that the SF organised and set in motion and the consequences regarding curricular, so and extra-curricular learning opportunities... 

4.1 Defining sus. & its incorporation into the curriculum framework

The initial work of the SF defined the dimensions of ed for sus. .. The SF also clarified the importance of linking the agenda to "employability" mindful of the primary concern of students for social mobility; effectively aligning it to them with strategic curriculum priorities of the uni.

4.2 Univ wide curriculum offerings

The design and planning for these were conducted in a series of more than ten two hour meetings w/ various configurations of the SF, using videoconferencing to link discussions across campuses.

4.2.1 Model UN

4.2.2 Climate Change Collaborations

5 Broader Strategic Benefits Delivered by the SF

... other strategic benefits continue to become apparent. .. the SF has ensured the institution's rank w/i the top 20 for two consecutive years. 

6 Explaining the Sus Forum as an Ongoing Generator of Curriculum Change

1. SF's concern is inclusive to all subject areas, and motivates involvement from across subject areas where individuals have a deep emotional affinity if not political commitment to it... SP provides an informal autonomous space in which like-minded individuals can discuss interesting topics... This compares to process, expectations and functions perceived to prevail amongst the formalised structures and practices of uni management which typically fulfill "top down" directives. .. While there is a definite core of active participants, SF activities are open and able to attract the "peripheral participation" (Lave and Wenger 1991) of the occasional involvement of academics, research-only staff, professional services and those in senior management roles. .. In this sense, the group name of choice instructive - a "forum"; not a "working-group" or "task-force" ...
2. ... departments and face the situation of being a "minority of one" (Kaz 1959). The concept of "academic loneliness" in either small or interdisciplinary institutions has been long recognised although it has attracted little attention...
3. the emergence of pedagogy (rather than discipline-specific res) as the purpose of the group enabled teaching-active staff to find common-ground despite differences in ontology or epistemology - or even differences in their broader understanding of sus as a concept. ... But the type of informal "leadership" of the SF is not incidental. Rather it is held by someone with academic and personal integrity, and a style of consultation, support and steering which is reflective of good HE leadership practices (Bryman 2007).

Enabling Faith-inspired Ed on the SD Goals through e-Learning

E-learning projects from the Global North usually face challenges in Africa. Teaching methods like the flipped classroom (cf. Winther-Neilsen 2014) are designed to suit students from the Global North, which is composed primarily of individualistic societies (cf. Danner 2012). African societies are based on elder systems, in which the elders in a village have a say in all decisions made... The potential of ICT in development projects was acknowledged by UNESCO (2005), which views "knowledge societies" as an accelerator of dev in developing countries. An example is the $100 laptop project, applied to schools in developing countries...  

Sus. Curriculum in UK Uni. Sus. Reports

... the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) for HE has complemented its quality audits with an ESD component (QAA 2014)... Sus. reports are an emerging trend in HE (Ceulemans et al. 2015b; White 2014) and there is limited guidance on their format and content. Of the existing guidelines, the Sus. Tracking Assessment and Rating System (STARTS) by AASHE is one of the most systematic and complete... While STARTS originated from and mainly provides for the American and Canadian HE sector, the Learning in Future Environment (LiFE) index by the EAUC is a UK self-assessment and reporting system... This routine monitoring can take place through the uni's annual sus report. 

2 Literature Review 

2.1 Sus. curriculum audits

To identify and record sus curriculum provision, certain uni in the UK have organised institutional curriculum reviews. .. Wyness and Sterling attempted to record sus curriculum provision at Plymouth Uni... UNESCO definition of ESD, which covers four areas: socioeconomic justice, cultural diversity, human rights of future generations and restoration of the Earth's eco-systems (Tierney et al. 2015: 508)... tool scores sus course content across three categories: economic, environmental and social. ..

4. Findings and Discussion

... three phases of the analysis and relate them to previous literature.

1. The first phase of the analysis explored how many uni issued an annual sus. report in the period defined.
2. the up-to-date status of the reports was explored. It appears that 44% of the reports were updated to the most recent academic year 2015-2016, while 39% covered the previous year (2014-2015) and 4% dated back to 2013 (Table 3).
3. sus curriculum provision coverage achieved by the reports (Fig. 1).

It might be of interest to note that the majority of reports coming from institutions with a Responsible Futures accreditation appear to cover sus curriculum provision comprehensively... Thus, it is not a surprise to see a reciprocity between the existence of a Responsible Futures accreditation and comprehensive coverage of sus curriculum in the reports... A positive correlation appears to exist between comprehensive sus curriculum coverage and participation in a sus assessment system... Standardisation of information is seen as positively contributing to report quality and credibility (Lock and Seele 2016).

6 Conclusion

... its Student Outcomes and Learning Gain indicator specifies equipping graduates with attributes that allow them to make "a strong contribution to society, economy and the environment" (TEF 2016: 23).

The Teaching-Res.-Practice Nexus as Framework for the Implementation of Sus. in Curricula in HE

... an equal linking of the subjects to achieve sus in applied teaching through a holistic framework, which generally refers to the "res-teaching-practice triangle" according to Kaplan (Account Horiz 1989: 12 9-132). .. Although there are already courses on sus theories at several uni, there is still room for dev in terms of the transfer of experiences from projects on sus dev. outside the academic sector gained over the last few years.

... Since HannB-Carl von Carlowitz, the concept of sus has developed far beyond a purely environmental concept, based on the recognition that the environment, the economy and society are mutually influencing each other... Beyond concrete content, it is designed to convey people's competency. Sus ed goes beyond pure factual knowledge, conveys abilities and values and enables the learning of the forward thinking, interdisciplinary knowledge, acting autonomously as well as the invitation to participate in social decision-making process... An essential didactic feature, which significantly promotes the motivation of students to learn, is that they can understand and also influence practically the meaning of the learning content with regard to their life-world context and their future... Service learning combines cognitive learning with the assumption of responsibility in the learning environment (Seifert and Zentner 2010). 

... priorities for the teaching on SD:

1. developing strategies for ESD
2. devising curricula for ESD
3. promoting sus schools, and
4. educating for sus consumption. 

... the general curricula framework for ESD (Table 1), according to OECD (2008)... can be seen that teaching in HE ... requires the integration of inter- and trans-disciplinary knowledge, including the participatory processes which considers the social aspects as well. 

2 The Teaching-Res-Practice Nexus

At the int'l level, the term "Teaching Res Nexus" (TRN) has become well-known describing a relationship between the two academic activities, which is mutually beneficial and expresses the fact that both aspects need to be equally integrated into the academic ed (Boyd et al. 2010; Magnell et al. 2016). The aim is to equip students on the basis of integrated thinking with skills and the determination for decision-making in order to be able to make practical decisions that are generally acceptable in practice (Locke 2009; Amador et al. 2015). ..While there are attempts to arrange the different concepts and terms, this subject is confronted with the difficulty that the terms "res" and "teaching" and "Nexus" are used differently.

A Critical Evaluation of the Representation of the QAA and HEA Guidance on ESD in Public Web Environments of UK HEIs.

In June 2014 the QAA and HE Academy (HEA) published their ESD guidance for HE... question: to what extent has the UK HE sector adopted and implemented the guidance in its curricula? A systematic web-based analysis has been performed of 139 HEIs' websites to identify the use of the guidance in the public web environments of UK HE...

2 Gwording Recognition for ESD

... Even though  the number of HEIs integrating ESD in the curriculum is increasing, change is occurring at a slow pace w/the mainstream of the institutions greening the estate whilst sticking to the traditional ed system (Yarime and Tanaka 2012: Su and Change 2010; Tilbury 2011)... In addition, there is a decreasing support for ESD from the UK govt and HE sector bodies... The guidance is a tool for supporting educators in embedding or including knowledge, understanding and awareness of SD across the curriculum by identifying graduate learning outcomes and outlining approaches to teaching, learning and assessment (Shephard and Dulgar 2015). 

6 Discussion

• ...  The results of this study show that the majority of the 139 institutional websites that were reviewed - 120 (86%) feature estate sus to some degree. 
• ... More than half of the UK HE sector (82, 62%) presents info. on ESD on their web
• ... An ever smaller group of HEIs referred to the QAA and HEA guidance for ESD (16, 12%)
• When comparing the 16 guidance institutions to the non-guidance institutions it becomes evident that the guidance institutions tend to report to a greater extent on their ESD ambitions and achievements. They also appear to present more info. about ESD delivery, graduate attributes, and pedagogic styles. Remarkably, though, a slight majority of the 16 HEIs score lowest on info. provision on estate sus.

Implementing Sustainability in the Curriculum of Universities: Approaches, Methods and Projects (World Sustainability Series) (English Edition)